CHAPTER 25
The candles and smoky oil lamps of Banco threw a fitful shimmer out upon the great river, casting huge, spectral shadows across its muddy, swirling waters, and seeming rather to intensify the blackness that lay thick and menacing upon its restless bosom. Rivermen who follow their hazardous calling along the Magdalena do not lightly risk the dangers of travel by night in their native canoes, when at any moment a false stroke, a sudden crash against a tossing forest tree, and a cry through the inky blackness, might sound to the straining ears of hushed listeners on the distant banks the elements of another of the mighty river’s grim nocturnal tragedies.
But on the night following the trial of Rosendo in distant Simití a canoe stole like a thing ashamed through the heavy shadows along the river’s margin, and poked its blunt nose into the ooze at the upper edge of the town. Its two scantily clad bogas, steaming with perspiration and flecked with mud from the charged waters, sprang lightly from the frail craft and quickly made it fast to one of the long stilts upon which a ramshackle frame house rested. Then they assisted the third occupant of the canoe, a girl, to alight; and together they wended their way up the slippery bank and toward the town above.
“Caramba, compadre!” ejaculated one of the men, stumbling into a deep rut, “it is well you know where we go. Hombre! but I travel no more on the river by night. And, compadre, we had best ask Padre Diego to offer a candle to the Virgin for our safe arrival, no?”
The other man chuckled. “To be sure, friend Julio. Don Diego has much influence with virgins.”
“Hombre! I like not his dirty work.”
“Bien, amigo, what would you? You are well paid; and besides, you score against that baby-faced priest, Josè, who drove you out of Simití because you were not married to your woman. You cannot complain, compadre.”
“Caramba! I have yet to see the color of the pesos. I do not much trust your Padre Diego.”
“Na, amigo, a bit of rum will put new life into your soaked gizzard. Cierto, this trip down the river was a taste of purgatory; but you know we may as well get used to it here, for when we pobres are dead who will buy Masses to get us out?”